Technology
I Pulled My Data From the Cloud: Do I Regret It?
Did I regret moving my data on-premise and breaking free from cloud dependency? I'll share the technical and operational reasons behind this decision from my.
#devops
109 posts found.
Technology
Not Everyone Needs Kubernetes
I explain why Kubernetes isn't the only solution for every project, highlighting the advantages of simplicity and cost-effectiveness based on my 20 years of.
Tutorials
Securing a Server in the First 45 Minutes: VPS Hardening Checklist
I've shared my experiences on how to harden a new VPS with essential security steps in the first 45 minutes. SSH, firewall, and user management.
Technology
Self-Hosting: A Hobby or a Necessity?
With 20 years of system architecture experience, I examine whether managing your own servers is a pleasure or an inevitable need.
Career
Thinking Beyond the Cloud: 5 Self-Hosting Skills That Make
I'm sharing the unique value that managing my own servers has added to my tech career, even in the cloud era, and 5 essential skills.
Career
5 Tactics to Reduce On-Call Stress in Distributed Systems
Being on-call for distributed systems can be stressful due to unexpected incidents and constant alerts. Here are 5 practical tactics to reduce that stress.
Technology
Local Build Cache vs Remote: Cost Balance in CI/CD Speed
Local build cache or remote cache in your CI/CD pipelines? I dive deep into the balance of speed, cost, and efficiency.
Technology
Choosing a Deploy Strategy in CI/CD Pipeline Optimization
I analyze blue-green, canary, and rolling update deploy strategies in terms of cost, risk, and resource consumption with a pragmatic approach.
Life
CI/CD Build Cache Management: Time Savings and Infrastructure Costs
Optimize build cache management in your CI/CD pipelines to save time and reduce infrastructure costs. A detailed guide.
Life
Log Level Strategy: Developer Comfort or Operational Burden?
The operational burden, performance losses, and correct log level strategy created in production by haphazardly added logs during software development...
Tutorials
Zero Downtime Deployment: An Unnecessary Burden for Simple Projects?
Are Zero Downtime Deployment (ZDD) strategies truly necessary for small and medium-sized projects? In this post, I'll discuss the costs and trade-offs from my.
Technology
Read Before Moving to Cloud: The Bitter Truths of 20 Years of
A bold analysis of the costs, risks, and missed opportunities behind the move to cloud, based on 20 years of system architecture experience.
Technology
What Happens When You Don't Set Up Monitoring? A Bitter Lesson from
In my twenty-year career, I've personally experienced how neglected monitoring leads to unexpected costs for systems and businesses. This post explores how.
Technology
How High‑Traffic Systems Fail
The collapse stories of high‑traffic systems usually stem from small overlooked details rather than major architectural mistakes.
Tutorials
Are Grafana UI Alerts Insufficient? Alertmanager Installation and Why
Why does Grafana's built-in alerting system fall short? A deep dive into Alertmanager installation, its advantages, and the ideal system architecture.
Career
Prioritizing Monitoring and Alerting: My 3-Step Pragmatic Guide
Striking the right balance between monitoring and alerting in system and application operations has always been challenging. In this post, I'll explain my.
Life
CI/CD Deployment Strategies: Speed or Security?
I examine the strategic choices made when balancing speed and security in CI/CD pipelines, and their real-world impacts.
Tutorials
The Operational Overhead of Migrating from Monolith to Modular
I share my experiences with the operational challenges and costs encountered when migrating from a monolithic application to a modular structure.
Tutorials
Build Cache Strategies: The Operational Burden of Speed
My experiences with the operational challenges I faced while shortening software build times and the trade-offs of different build cache strategies…
Career
3 Deploy Strategies for CI/CD: Cost and Efficiency Analysis
Based on my experience, I analyze the costs, efficiencies, and operational burdens of CI/CD deploy strategies in detail.
Technology
Dependency Management: Monorepo or Polyrepo? My Choices
I compare monorepo and polyrepo approaches for dependency management in software projects, drawing from my own experiences. Advantages, disadvantages, and.
Technology
Secret Rotation: Practical Ways to Enhance Security
Regularly rotating secrets in systems is a critical security step. Drawing from my own experiences, I'll discuss secret rotation strategies and practical...
Career
CI/CD for Side Projects: 3 Pragmatic Design Choices
I explain how I set up CI/CD processes in my side projects using pragmatic approaches and the challenges I encountered during these processes.
Life
Kernel CVE Response: Quick Patch or Defense in Depth?
Drawing on years of experience, this post explores whether to simply patch or strengthen a system with layered defense when a Kernel CVE emerges…
Life
3 Load Balancing Strategies for High Availability in Side Projects
I'm delving into 3 different load balancing strategies I've used to ensure high availability in my own side projects or small-scale applications.
Technology
The Operational Cost of JWT Lifecycle Management: Overlooked Details
I delve into the operational burden and cost of JWT lifecycle management, examining overlooked strategic points and practical solutions.
Tutorials
Seamless Deployment: Blue/Green vs Canary Trade-off Analysis
This post provides a technical deep dive into Blue/Green and Canary seamless deployment strategies, examining their trade-offs and real-world applications.
Life
Dependency Vulnerabilities: The Cost of Constant Updates
Managing software dependencies carries a continuous burden and security risk in today's software world. In this post, I explore the technical and financial.
Life
Secret Rotation Automation: The Operational Cost of Security
I analyze the operational overhead of secret key rotation and the cost-effectiveness of automation. Real-world scenarios and trade-offs.
Career
Monolith vs. Microservices: Which is Better for Your CI/CD Pipeline?
Comparing the impact of Monolith and Microservices architectures on CI/CD processes, with practical experience. Deciding when to choose which.
Technology
Self-Hosted Runner vs SaaS: Which is More Cost-Effective?
Does using self-hosted runners in CI/CD processes truly save money? I compared hidden costs, hardware resources, and operational overhead.
Life
Build Cache Optimization in CI/CD Pipelines: 3 Practical Ways
Improve developer quality of life by speeding up slow CI/CD processes. We examine 3 practical and concrete methods for build cache optimization.
Career
GitOps vs Push-Based CI/CD: Which One for Consulting?
Based on my hands-on field experience, I compare GitOps and push-based CI/CD approaches. Which one should we choose for different scenarios?
Career
Modern Approaches to Secret Rotation: Securing Your Systems
Learn modern secret rotation practices to keep your systems secure. In this guide, we will walk through the process step-by-step.
Tutorials
Restricting Tool Usage in AI Agents: Secure Design in 3 Steps
How do you control the tool usage of AI agents? Secure agent architecture with schema hardening, isolation, and RBAC.
Career
Fast Deploy Decisions: Team Stress and the Edge of Debt Accumulation
A guide from my personal experiences on team stress, technical debt, and trade-offs encountered when choosing deploy strategies.
Technology
Self-hosted GitHub Actions Runner: Balancing Cost and Control
I examine the advantages and disadvantages of running your GitHub Actions runners on your own servers, focusing on cost, performance, and control.
Career
Blue/Green vs. Rolling Deploy: Risk and Cost Analysis
A deep dive into the risks, costs, and practical applications of Blue/Green and Rolling deployment strategies in software delivery.
Life
✍️ Hand-written
Side Project Graveyard: When Should You Pull the Plug?
My guide to pruning dead projects that have been accumulating for years, consuming RAM on servers, and generating domain renewal bills.
Tutorials
Docker Deploy on VPS: Nginx Strategies for Zero Downtime
Mustafa Erbay details the technical aspects and strategies for achieving zero-downtime deployments using Nginx for Dockerized applications on a VPS.
Tutorials
Your App is 'Up' But Not Working: Docker Healthchecks
I explain step-by-step how to write robust health checks (HEALTHCHECK) for situations where Docker containers appear 'up' but the application isn't actually.
Technology
✍️ Hand-written
My Own Script Killed My CI Runner: The Dark Side of Cleanup
I'm sharing how a cleanup script I wrote on my GitHub Actions runner crashed my system, and the lessons I learned from this painful experience.
Technology
Cloudflare Cache's Blind Spot: The Cost of Bypass Rules
I explain the unexpected effects of Cloudflare cache bypass rules and how I overcame them with Nginx to improve performance. My experiences on my own VPS.
Tutorials
The Invisible Wars of Environment Variable Management: Hidden…
Discover why environment variable management is so critical, the common nightmares, and effective strategies to win these hidden wars. From application...
Technology
Vault Unlocked: The Hidden Secret in the Environment Variable
Environment Variables play a vital role in application configuration. But mismanaging them can leak hidden secrets and…
Tutorials
The Load Balancer's Silent Betrayal: Misrouted Traffic
A deep look at how load balancer (Load Balancer) misconfigurations affect system performance and the issues that cause traffic to get misrouted.
Career
Hidden Sentinel Wars in Production: A Firewall Betrayal
Dig deep into the unexpected effects of Sentinel-based firewalls in production and these 'hidden wars.' Strategies and solutions.
Technology
Immutable Infrastructure: An Operational Revolution in the Cloud
Learn the principles of Immutable Infrastructure in the cloud and find out how it can boost your operational efficiency. Step by…
Tutorials
The Anatomy of Unscalable Database Decisions in System Architecture
A deep look at the long-term effects of database choices in system architecture and the scalability traps they create. The cost of bad decisions and…
Career
State Management in the Cloud: An SRE's Lost Battles
Explore the challenges of state management in cloud environments and the battles fought in this space, told from an SRE's perspective.
Technology
Certificate Expiry: The Silent Security Bombs in Production
The critical security and operational risks that expiring certificates cause in production environments, why they slip through the cracks, and effective…
Tutorials
Spot Instance Optimization: A Hidden Cost Trap in Production
While Spot Instances offer cost savings in cloud computing, in production environments they can create hidden cost traps with unexpected interruptions. In…
Career
The Hidden Trap of Auto-Scaling: A Capacity Engineer's…
Learn about the unexpected challenges of auto-scaling and how, as a capacity engineer, you can avoid these traps.
Career
Critical Database Migration: Decisions With No Way Back
Discover why database migrations sometimes turn into decisions you can't undo, and what that means for your career. Detailed planning, risk…
Career
Ephemeral Storage Crisis in Production: Containers' Instant Memory…
Read Mustafa Erbay's take on the crises caused by ephemeral storage in the container world and how these instant memory wars affect your career…
Career
Time Sync Differences: Ghost Bugs in Distributed Systems…
Discover the 'ghost bugs' caused by time sync differences in distributed systems. How they appear, how to diagnose…
Tutorials
A Hidden Resource Exhaustion War: The Deadly Dance of Containers
Learn about the hidden resource-exhaustion war containers fight, and how to manage this deadly dance. Performance optimization and stability included…
Tutorials
Hidden Network Policy Crises in Production: Kubernetes War Stories
Overlooked details in Kubernetes Network Policies can spark unexpected crises in production. In this article we'll dig into common pitfalls and…
Tutorials
Kubernetes Network Policy Errors: A Battlefield at Midnight...
A comprehensive guide to fighting Kubernetes Network Policy errors. Understand common pitfalls and save your night with practical solutions.
Technology
ConfigMap and Secret Management in Kubernetes: The Anatomy of an…
Explore the challenges, best practices, and solutions around managing ConfigMaps and Secrets in Kubernetes. Learn how to head off the operational nightmares.
Tutorials
Pet and Cattle Models in Cloud Architecture: The Scaling Dilemma
Learn the 'Pet' and 'Cattle' models in cloud architecture, the scaling challenges, and modern approaches with Mustafa Erbay's perspective.
Career
The Human Side of SRE: From Pager Fatigue to Proactive Trust
Discover that SRE is not just about technology, but also about human health and team well-being. A roadmap for moving from pager fatigue to a proactive…
Career
The Load Balancer Nightmare: Hidden Configuration Errors and Team…
An in-depth look at how overlooked load balancer configuration errors can wreck system stability and devastate engineering teams.
Life
Unscalable Cloud Architecture: An Outage Story
A real outage story driven by unscalable cloud architecture, and the lessons we can take away from it.
Life
Ghosts of Distributed Systems: The Team Stress of Intermittent Errors
An in-depth look at the nature of intermittent errors in distributed systems, the stress they place on teams, and strategies for dealing with these 'ghosts'...
Technology
Concurrent Deployment Stress Testing on Cloud-Native Infrastructure
Why concurrent deployments matter on cloud-native platforms, and the role stress testing plays in keeping them from becoming incidents.
Technology
Kubernetes Network Policies: Invisible Walls Between Pods
Learn how to secure network traffic between pods using Kubernetes Network Policies. A from-A-to-Z guide with detailed examples for Network…
Technology
The Terraform Plan Mystery: Automation That Deletes the Wrong Resource
Take a deep look at Terraform plan's surprise resource deletions and the strategies for protecting your automation pipelines from these kinds of failures.
Tutorials
Canary Deployments on Cloud Native Infrastructure and the…
Explore the Deployment Blackhole problems frequently encountered during canary deployments on cloud-native infrastructure, along with proposed remedies.
Technology
Kubernetes Pod Security: Invisible Battles with Network Policies
Discover the power of Network Policies for securing pod-to-pod networking in Kubernetes. Effective answers to invisible threats.
Tutorials
Terraform CI Guardrails: Plan/Apply, Drift, and Policy Check
Balancing safety and speed in IaC: a guide to managing prod changes through plan/apply separation, drift detection, policy-as-code, and approval flows.
Tutorials
Phased Hardening of Kubernetes with PSA + Kyverno
Roll out security guardrails in production clusters gradually with Pod Security Admission (PSA) and Kyverno: an audit→warn→enforce plan.
Tutorials
GitOps Secrets Management with SOPS + age
A practical SOPS + age setup and operational discipline for keeping encrypted secrets in Git and decrypting them safely inside CI/CD and the cluster.
Tutorials
systemd-Based Service Containerisation with Podman Quadlet
A practical way to manage server services with systemd and Podman Quadlet, free from the Docker daemon dependency.
Tutorials
Designing an Enterprise Management Network Overlay with Headscale
A Headscale-based management network overlay guide for providing controlled access to scattered servers and management endpoints.
Tutorials
Continuous Vulnerability Validation on Internal Assets with Nuclei
A practical Nuclei approach for scanning internal network services with low noise and tying validated findings to your operations workflow.
Tutorials
An SBOM-Based Image Admission Gate with Syft and Grype
A practical guide to admitting container images not just by a CVE list, but by component inventory and policy threshold.
Technology
A FinOps Guardrail Layer for the Enterprise Cloud
An architectural approach that bounds cloud cost from the start with policy, tagging, and lifecycle rules instead of reporting on it after the fact.
Tutorials
A Guide to Container Supply Chain Signing with Cosign
A practical and enterprise-friendly setup guide for signing container images with Cosign and verifying them in the delivery pipeline.
Tutorials
A Guide to Tenant-Based State Separation with OpenTofu
A practical guide to splitting OpenTofu state in order to preserve tenant, environment, and ownership boundaries in enterprise infrastructure.
Technology
Reversible Schema Migration Pipeline in ERP Infrastructures
An ERP approach that manages database schema changes through a reversible and observable migration pipeline, without amplifying outage risk.
Tutorials
Internal API Authorization Chain with Envoy ext_authz
A secure authorization pipeline you can build with the Envoy ext_authz filter to separate identity, policy, and decision logging on internal service traffic.
Tutorials
Tiered Log Retention with Grafana Loki
A cost-focused retention guide for designing hot, warm, and archive log tiers on Loki.
Tutorials
Monitoring Time Drift on Servers with Chrony
A Chrony-based guide to making clock drift visible across distributed Linux servers and reducing operational risk.
Tutorials
Passive Health Checks for Internal Services with HAProxy
An HAProxy approach to catching internal service failures from real request flow without adding active probe traffic.
Technology
Infrastructure as Code with Terraform
A practical guide to state management, module design, drift control, and a safe promotion flow when building IaC with Terraform.
Tutorials
A Centralised Log Collection Pipeline with Vector
A practical Vector-based setup approach for collecting and routing application, syslog, and infrastructure logs through a single stream.
Tutorials
CI/CD Pipeline Design and Best Practices
A guide to designing the CI/CD pipeline as build-test-gate-deploy for fast feedback, safe releases, and low-risk deploys.
Technology
Microservice Architecture with Kubernetes
A practical guide that addresses service boundaries, traffic management, SLOs, and platform responsibilities together when designing microservices on…
Technology
Golden Path Design in Enterprise Platforms
An architectural framework for the golden path approach so platform teams can deliver speed and standardization together.
Tutorials
Detecting Server Configuration Drift with Ansible
A guide to Ansible-based drift auditing for measuring and reporting deviations from the expected state on Linux servers.
Tutorials
Safe Version Promotion with Argo CD Image Updater
A guide for setting up a safe promotion model on a GitOps pipeline without leaving container versions to uncontrolled automation.
Tutorials
Gradually Tightening Kubernetes Network Policies with Cilium
A guide to moving Kubernetes network policy from observability into enforced control without breaking production.
Tutorials
Effective Version Control with Git and GitHub
A field guide to Git/GitHub practices — branch strategy, PR review discipline, clean commit history, and release flow.
Tutorials
An OPA Pipeline for Terraform Plan Policies
A practical guide to gating infrastructure changes through policy by inspecting Terraform plan output with OPA.
Tutorials
A Centralized Log Routing Pipeline with Vector
A practical Vector-based setup for filtering, enriching, and routing scattered log streams to multiple destinations.
Technology
Designing Self-Service Infrastructure with Platform Engineering
A guide to designing, at enterprise scale, a self-service platform approach that takes infrastructure teams out of the bottleneck role.
Tutorials
Docker Container Security Guide
From image supply chain to runtime hardening, a practical checklist and runbook for running Docker containers safely in production.
Tutorials
Multi-Environment Promotion Pipeline with GitOps
A practical, GitOps-based guide for building a controlled promotion flow across development, test, and production environments.
Tutorials
External Secrets Flow for Kubernetes Secret Rotation
A guide based on External Secrets for pulling secret data from a central vault and applying rotation in Kubernetes environments.
Tutorials
Designing Prometheus Alert Routing
A guide for building an Alertmanager routing model that reduces misdirected alerts and accelerates incident response.
Tutorials
Publishing Internal Services and Automating TLS with Traefik
A Traefik-based guide for safely publishing internal services and automating the certificate lifecycle.
Tutorials
Machine Identity Management with Vault
A guide to designing short-lived machine identities for servers, services, and automation users instead of static secrets.
Tutorials
Immutable Infrastructure Discipline on Linux Servers
An approach for moving server configuration out of manual labour and into a safe, repeatable automation flow.
Tutorials
End-to-End Observability Pipeline with OpenTelemetry
An OpenTelemetry-based observability architecture that brings metric, log and trace data into a single standard.
Technology
Kubernetes Is Not For Everyone: A Look With 20 Years of Experience
With 20 years of system architecture experience, I discuss why Kubernetes is not the right solution for everyone, focusing on cost and complexity.
Tutorials
Secret Rotation Strategies: The Security Cost of Automation
I delve into secret rotation strategies, the impact of automation on security, and practical approaches.
Technology
20 Lessons I Learned in Server Management
In my twenty-year journey in system administration, I learned much more than just technical knowledge. The most important lessons came from my mistakes, my.
Technology
Is Open Source Sustainable?
I've worked with countless open-source projects in my career. But how sustainable is this 'free' world really? I discuss this topic with my experiences.